Is the Sun Setting on Japan?

A Japanese debt default is not only possible but increasingly likely, some experts say. Can that once-thriving nation be saved?

HEDGE-FUND MANAGER OF OUR acquaintance waxes apocalyptic when painting Japan's economic future. Within 50 years or so, he contends, high-tech aircraft will be taking Chinese and American tourists on fly-overs there to view the dilapidated remains of what was once the world's second-largest economy. By then, all that survives will be blighted megalopolises like Tokyo, populated mostly by the elderly, and decaying, weedchoked highways, bridges and bullet-train right-of-ways, spectral reminders of a once-vibrant society that lost...